Part 1

Transcriber's Notes:

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=.

Small uppercase have been replaced with regular uppercase.

Blank pages have been eliminated.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the original.

A few typographical errors have been corrected.

On _the_ Eve _of_ Redemption

S. M. Melamed, Ph. D.

Alpha Omega Publishing Company, New York

COPYRIGHT, 1918

ALPHA OMEGA PUBLISHING CO., INC.

The following pages comprise a number of editorial leaders discussing questions and problems pertaining to Jewish nationalism and Zionism which were published in the _American Jewish Chronicle_ in the years 1916-17-18.

FOREWORD

The war has caused an upheaval of the whole world; vast changes have been wrought in many peoples. Destruction of life and treasure has brought about a revolution of national assets and resources, and there has been stock taking of the spiritual no less than of the material possessions. We have confident hope that the material losses will be balanced by the moral progress of the peoples of the world, great and small.

No people has felt the upheaval more than have the Jews. None has had a greater share in its sorrows. None has had more reason to examine carefully its past and its present and to define its future plans; and none can look with clearer purpose or with firmer courage into the future. For none has better ground than have the Jews for confident hope in the moral progress of the world,--that people which has been the constant witness of the course of civilization throughout the ages and has never lost its faith in the ultimate victory of Justice and Right.

We need not speak in generalities. The smaller nations are assured that their rights will be safeguarded in the future, and that these rights will embrace not only protection from attack and aggression, but equally the right of development along the lines of their own national bent, the right of self-government, the right to cultivate their own spiritual possessions. There is no other people to whom this is so full of deep meaning as to the Jews. During the many centuries of the Dispersion our people has ever looked forward to its Restoration in its ancestral home. During these many centuries there has never been a day that the prayers for the Return have not ascended in every country of the world in which the Children of Israel have been dispersed. This undying hope has been the factor in the unique, the miraculous preservation of a small people scattered among all the peoples of the globe.

The national movement of the past generation, which has led to the rejuvenation of the Hebrew language, to the founding of prosperous Jewish colonies in Palestine, to the establishment of the Zionist Organization with its branches throughout the world, this national movement has trained us to think politically and to act with statesmanlike grasp of present conditions and of plans for the future. A part of our people has been prepared to deal with the great national problems which obtrude themselves upon us today. Large numbers are still confused by the new outlook and must find guides to direct them in the new paths.

The Essays which Dr. Melamed presents to us in this volume are therefore most welcome at this time. He has applied his vast knowledge of history, philosophy and literature, and his intimate acquaintance with Jewish life in many parts of the world, to answer many of the questions about which there has been confusion, and to point out the direction of progress and development in the future. In clear and forceful language he has analyzed Jewish conditions in the past and studied the needs of the future, so as to point out what the present demands of us. We may not agree fully with all the views and conclusions expressed, but we shall find them original, suggestive and illuminating. The publication of these Essays is therefore opportune and timely, and the Jewish public is deeply indebted to Dr. Melamed for their presentation.

HARRY FRIEDENWALD.

Baltimore, December 23, 1917.

JUDEA AND ROME

Even history has its reasons that reason often fails to understand. When news reached Rome in August 70 C.E. that Judea was conquered, the temple burned and the Jewish people subjugated, the Roman populace greeted it with the infamous cry, "Hierosolyma est perdita"; there was rejoicing at the downfall and humiliation of the Jewish state. Eighteen hundred and forty-seven years later, after the deafening cries "Hierosolyma est perdita" were shouted in the streets of the eternal city, an Italian army leaves Rome with Palestine again as its objective; but this time it marches not with the object of annihilating Judea, but, as an official message puts it--to enable the allied powers to wrest the Holy Land from the Turks, to turn it over eventually to the Jews, and thus to rebuild Judea. Even if there should be little to the Roman announcement, it is not lacking a pathetic touch; it testifies to the grim irony of history. The same Rome that once destroyed Judea is making public its intention today to help rebuild it. Our ancestors, who were the tragic witnesses of the cruel destruction of Judea, would surely not think of the possibility that after a lapse of nearly two thousand years, an army should leave Rome for Palestine with the object of helping to reinstate the Jewish people in the land of its forefathers; nor could anyone have foreseen that the Rome of old, that aimed at the subjugation of small nationalities, would be succeeded by a new Rome that pronounces its stand for the rights and political re-establishment of small and oppressed nationalities.

Of course, people will say that modern Rome can in no way be compared to ancient Rome and that the two have nothing in common. However, those who have read Montesquieu and Hegel on the deeds of ancient Rome and those who have followed the development of modern Rome, will recognize the close similarity between the two. As far as power and political and strategic genius go, modern Rome, it is true, cannot be compared to its predecessor of two thousand years ago; but if traditions, surroundings and other sociological factors that give a people shape and form count for anything, the Roman of today is bound to have a good deal in common with the Roman of two thousand years ago, even if the one is not racially the offspring of the other.

Present-day Rome has much in common with ancient Rome. The main difference between them is, of course, this: While ancient Rome, dominating the entire world then known to humanity, and forming the centre of the Mediterranean civilization, was the world power of the time, modern Rome holds neither the political position of ancient Rome nor is it the representative and bearer of the Mediterranean civilization. The predominance of Mediterranean civilization has gone with the last great Doges of Venice, and modern Rome is no longer the centre of gravitation of civilized humanity that ancient Rome was two thousand years ago. In the course of the last millenium, the centre of civilization has shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. It is the Atlantic civilization that is supreme today. The whole terrible fight that is going on today in all parts of the world is not a fight about the Mediterranean and its supremacy, but it is a struggle for the Atlantic and its predominance--and, in this struggle, Rome is no longer playing a leading part.

In the course of the fight about the Mediterranean, Judea was destroyed and the whole Semitic race nearly annihilated. The wars of Rome against Carthage, the people of which spoke Hebrew and formed a branch of the Aramaic family of nations, were fought with the only object of preserving Roman supremacy in the Mediterranean. The fight for the Atlantic, however, has already resulted in the re-establishment of one Semitic nation--the Arab--and will probably also result in the re-establishment of old Judea. That is where the difference between the fight for the Mediterranean, fought by ancient Rome, and the fight for the Atlantic, in which modern Rome participates, comes in.

The ancient Mediterranean Rome was not only imperialistic to the core, but universalistic as well. The chief aim and plan of ancient Rome was to subjugate the whole world, then known to humanity, with a view to dominating it. The idea of a universal monarchy at the expense of the independence and freedom of other nations first originated in ancient Rome. Rome of today, which takes part in the fight for the Atlantic, is imperialistic, although no longer striving for political universalism and world domination; it announces that it stands today for the preservation of the individuality of the small nations.

The prospective re-establishment of Judea, as one of the consequences of the present war, cannot be a blind chance of fate. There is historical logic in this development. Palestine, as a Mediterranean country could not maintain its independence in the face of a rising Mediterranean world power that strove to master not only the Mediterranean but all the other parts of the globe then known to mankind. Our sages of old found a thousand and one moral and political reasons for the downfall of ancient Judea and for its destruction by Rome. They ascribed the downfall of ancient Judea not only to political, but even to moral causes and to the growth of individual hatred and dissensions among the Jews themselves. The internal political and moral reasons advanced by our sages for the downfall of Judea may have contributed to the destruction, but the main reason was the determination of Rome to master all the shores of the Mediterranean and to dominate the entire ancient world. In the face of this fact, even an internally solid and strong Judea would have finally succumbed as did Carthage, which produced greater generals and gave a better military account of itself than did Judea. The destruction of Judea was a tragic historical necessity and could only have been avoided if Rome had, by a miracle, suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth. Were present Rome what ancient Rome was, the centre of civilization that strove for the mastery not only of the Mediterranean countries but also of the entire world, the prospective re-establishment of Judea today would have as little chance as ancient Judea of surviving or resisting Roman aggression. The prospective re-establishment of Judea is only possible because the centre of civilization has been shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.

Why did the Jewish people suffer two thousand years under the dispersion and why did they not try during this long period to re-establish their political sovereignty in the land of their ancestors? Even the best of our thinkers ascribe this national default and political apathy to a sort of lethargy of which the Jews were apparently the victims. To many a Jewish thinker, Ahad Ha'am not excepted, the past two thousand years of Jewish existence appears to be planless and one great historic confusion; but on looking closely at developments, one will come to recognize that not because of lethargy, but because of given historical conditions, the Jewish people could not up to our times have attempted to re-establish their national sovereignty in the land of their forefathers. More than a thousand years after the downfall of western Rome, Mediterranean civilization, though degenerated, remained supreme and was identical with civilization at large. The chief move of its centre from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and the consolidation of a new center was accomplished only after a struggle of nearly five hundred years. So long as Atlantic civilization was not supreme and so long as the fight for its supremacy was not finished, the political re-establishment of Judea, closely connected with the settlement of the solution of questions arising out of the fight for the Atlantic and all that there is to it--the individualization of international politics, the preservation of the small nationalities, their political restoration, etc.--could not be taken up and no serious attempt to re-establish the Jewish nationality in Palestine could be made by the Jews or other nations interested in the settlement of the Jewish question.

For these reasons, the re-establishment of Judea, as one of the post-bellum problems, is as historically logical now as was the downfall of Judea a historical necessity two thousand years ago.

There are no blind chances in history, nor are there stagnant moments in history. History has its reasons, which, however, reason often fails to understand.

LAND AND PEOPLE

Ever since the Jewish people lost its national independence and sovereignty and began to live in dispersion among the nations of the earth, it has lost the opportunity and possibility of continuing the work of its national civilization and has had to be satisfied with producing cultural values only. Everything that individual Jews have achieved in the past two thousand years in the domain of civilization has been an enrichment of the civilization of the peoples among whom they have lived. Jews have always been prominent in commerce and industry, but there was no national Jewish commerce and no national Jewish industry, even when those who created and developed certain branches of commerce were all Jews. Their commercial and industrial activities and accomplishments strengthened the other nations among whom the Jews lived, but not themselves. In many cases they have endangered and imperiled the Jewish people, because they became the arsenal of anti-Semitic weapons. The individual has profited by Jewish industrial and commercial achievements, but not the Jewish collective body. In short, all our work and energy in the domain of practical civilization has reached not the Jewish people, but other nations, and only a few have given us credit for these achievements.

Often enough have we been blamed for them. The Dutchman is full of envy of the Jew to the present day for having monopolized the diamond cutting industry; the Turks are still angry when they remember that Baron de Hirsch built their railroads. In Switzerland people are blaming the Jews for having monopolized the silk and watch industries; the Russians antagonize them because of their big share in the development of the petrol wells in the Caucasus and in the lumber business in western Russia. A famous German professor, Werner Sombart, has written a voluminous book of five hundred pages in which he indicts us for having developed capitalism, while others are accusing the Jews of having produced anti-capitalistic forces. In short, not only have the activities of individual Jews in the domain of civilization not been of profit to them as a people, but they have in too many cases served as a basis of attack.

The cause of these peculiar phenomena was our diaspora life. We had no homeland of our own. We had no national soil beneath us and no national sky above us. We were a wandering people and as such could not produce a national civilization, which involves and presupposes a static and not a dynamic order of things. But as soon as the Jews can lead a normal national life, all this, unhappy and tragic, will change radically and an entirely new order of things will arise. Not the Jewish individual, as heretofore, but the Jewish people at large, will be the agency of the Jewish genius and whatever the Jewish individual has to contribute to civilization he will contribute through the Jewish people. While his achievements in this domain will serve humanity, as heretofore, they will at the same time enrich the life of his own people and become a source of strength instead of weakness; when the Jews have an opportunity to be active for civilization as Jews, Jewish individualism, the curse of our racial life, will gradually disappear.

Only a few of us realize the fact that this individualism, which finds its unpleasant expression in petty factionalism, communal strife, party quarrels and lack of discipline among the rank and file, is in the main to be ascribed to the fact that the Jews have no national civilization. If we had one, many an unpleasant phenomenon in our public life would be impossible. If the Jews had common political responsibilities, if they had all to look to the safety of their country, if they had all to look after their national economic interests, the national intellect would be more uniform and two Jews would not have three different opinions. It is the lack of a national Jewish civilization that makes the Jewish intellect queer and misshapen. The mind of a people can only be trained by its national civilization, and is orientated by it. But since the Jews have lacked national civilization for the last two thousand years, the intellect of the nation has lost its uniformity, has become atomized and has in many cases gone astray. This has added to our inner misery and has driven many an idealistic Jew to despair. At the moment when the Jews begin to lead a national life on national soil and under their own sky, which give out line and color to the soul of a nation, many negative energies which are active in our life because of the effects of diaspora existence must necessarily disappear. The intellectual discipline of the nation will be re-established and the life of its soul will again assume normal proportions. There will be a Jewish public opinion in the best meaning of the term, not merely the opinion of individual Jews.

It is generally asserted that, though the Jews as such have not produced a civilization during their life in diaspora, they have produced a culture. This is sincerely believed by all Jews, by believers and disbelievers, orthodox and reform, nationalists and assimilationists. Though one lays more stress on the spiritual and the other more on the secular aspect of the so-called Jewish culture, the outstanding fact is, however, that the belief in the Jewish culture produced in the diaspora is general. But if it is true that culture is a superstructure of civilization and has civilization as its basis, it is hard to see how it is possible to assume for one moment that the Jews have produced anything like a culture during their diaspora life.

It is true that Jews have written books among which some are famous in world-literature. It is true that the Jews have painted good pictures. It is also true that the Jews have composed good music. But the question is often more than justified whether or not the Jewish genius has drawn the material from Jewish sources and Jewish life. Are all the good books Jews have written Jewish books? Are all the good pictures Jews have painted Jewish art? And is the good music Jews have composed Jewish music? In some cases they are partly Jewish. In the overwhelming majority of cases they are not Jewish at all. Neither Spinoza nor Bergson, neither Heine nor Hoffmannsthal, are Jews in the sense that they have been inspired exclusively by Jewish motives and that they have drawn their inspiration from Jewish sources alone. But we can go even further and maintain that even those great Jews from Philo of Alexandria to Maimonides and from Maimonides to Herman Cohen, who were always conscious of their Judaism and who thought that they were working as Jews and that their creations were Jewish, stood much more under the spell of alien than Jewish influence, and in their work were less Jews than is generally supposed. In spite of their racial enthusiasm, their intellect was hyphenated. Philo was at least as much Greek as he was Jew, Maimonides at least as much Greek and Arab, and Cohen is at least as much German as he is Jew, if not more.

We are quick in our condemnation of those who wrote on the tombstone of Maimonides, "Heretic and Disbeliever." We are angry at the "fanatics" of Amsterdam who excommunicated Spinoza, and we are often angry at those who utter severe criticism of Herman Cohen as a Jew. But these fanatics, wrong as they may be in their methods, are not entirely wrong in their motives and ideas. They are Jews in whom strong Jewish instincts are alive and these Jews, gifted with more original instincts than the average Jew, see more quickly what is Jewish and what is not in the work of a great Jew; it is the un-Jewish motive in these works by which they are repulsed.

Even the Jewish religion has been largely influenced, not only by non-Jewish surroundings, but also by non-Jewish religious motives. The truth of the matter is that national Jewish culture ceased to be with the destruction of the Jewish state. From that time on, individual Jews have cultivated Jewish thoughts and Jewish feelings, but they could not prevent their thoughts and feelings from being so mingled with and darkened by non-Jewish thoughts and feelings as to lose their original strength. Much of our so-called national literature is not organic, but consists of a number of books written by individual Jews who were only too often inspired by motives more non-Jewish than Jewish. The same is true of Jewish art, Jewish music, etc. Only when our culture touches upon our classical past or upon our national future, that is to say, when it is not influenced by the chaos of the present, is it truly Jewish.

When the Jews return to Palestine and begin to develop a national civilization, their culture will be built up not only on the past or the future, but also on the present. It will grow with the growth of civilization and it will not be a culture of individuals who are inspired by one thought appearing in different colors as the result of various influences; it will be the culture of a nation, an organic essence produced and developed with the help of the entire nation.

This will be the consequence of a national Jewish homeland in Palestine.

PALESTINE'S ROLE IN THE WORLD'S HISTORY

Even territories are subject to the incalculable caprice of Fate. Palestine, a small territory in Western Asia, forming the southern third of the province of Syria, excelled in natural beauty by Switzerland or the Tyrol, has nevertheless been touched by the Spirit of Humanity and has exerted a greater influence upon the development of the human mind than any other country in the world, not excepting ancient Hellas and Rome. There is hardly another land that has witnessed as great historic events as has Palestine; there is surely no other land that has seen so many invading conquerors on its soil. No other spot on the globe has so kindled the magnetism of the great nations throughout the ages as Palestine. Today, when an army of the mighty British Empire is fighting hard to conquer Palestine, the land of eternal mystery and miracles, it is well to remember that throughout the ages every great power has fought for the possession of the Holy Land. In the early days of our civilization Babylonians, Egyptians, Assyrians and Persians in turn tried to conquer the country. At a later time, the Greeks and the Romans made the attempt; in the middle ages the great nations of Europe were organized by the Church to wrest Palestine from the Mohammedans. All the great conquerors in history, from Nebuzaradan and Titus to Napoleon, have commanded invading armies on Palestine soil.